160 feet above the Gard River, Tony and
Anne played a death-defying game of tag.
Next day in the arena of Nimes, we had to
restrain Tony, double-dared by his sister,
from leaping into the bullring as a spontaneo.
"Let's get to the coast," pleaded Roselle.
We explored this legendary littoral from
the bulrushes of the Camargue* to the lemon
groves of Menton. The children took a dim
view of Nice because its pebble beach was
not like Waikiki. So we went back to Frejus,
where Augustus Caesar built the ships that
defeated Antony and Cleopatra in 31 B.C.,
and found a proper beach of sand-but no
hotel rooms. In desperation we rented a
friend's 12th-century chateau. Tony locked
his sister in the tower "in durance vile."
"We really need a place of our own," sighed
Roselle. At St. Tropez we were offered a
ruined sheepfold for $50,000. At that point
we drove inland through the Maure Moun
tains and began to climb slowly into the
foothills of the Alps of Upper Provence.
Far from the madding crowd's ignoble
splash, we found sleepy villages of ocher
stone and sun-bleached tile. In a luminous
pine-scented solitude we lay on our backs
staring at a sky as blue as Hawaii's. The red
dish earth was mantled with green vines and
silver olive trees, abiding gifts of the Greeks,
who founded Marseille about 600 B.C.
At an altitude of 1,500 feet we came to
Aups (the Provencal word for Alps), which
some inhabitants say is the village Julius
Caesar referred to when, according to Plu
tarch, he declared, "I would rather be first
among these fellows than second in Rome."
Though there is no historic foundation for
*The author described this region, "France's Wild,
Watery South," in the May 1973 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC.
one of many medieval villages that crown the hilltops of southern France.
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